


Pretty Disappointment

by magikfanfic



Series: As Safe as Possible [2]
Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, alex and karo are also there but they do not have speaking roles, anxiety mentions, light Violence, warning Chase just curses. it's in his nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 09:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13074405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: Chase Stein does not realize that he is hopelessly, irrevocably in love with Gert until their group comes face to face with their parents again, and Gert, pacifist, fight battles with your words and not your fists Gert, manages to clock his father across the face with such vitriolic force that Victor Stein stumbles back, mouth agape and shocked.Sequel toAthena Risingso it is recommended to read that first.





	Pretty Disappointment

**Author's Note:**

> Whelp. You guys asked for it, and you got it. More Gert/Chase fic and even set after the other one, too.

Chase Stein does not realize that he is hopelessly, irrevocably in love with Gert until their group comes face to face with their parents again, and Gert, pacifist, fight battles with your words and not your fists Gert, manages to clock his father across the face with such vitriolic force that Victor Stein stumbles back, mouth agape and shocked. That action seals it, blazes truth across his mind and heart in such a rush that Chase feels winded. He’s planted himself between them before he even knows what he’s doing because he knows his father isn’t going to let that go without retaliating, also knows that Victor Stein has no qualms about hitting women or kids, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let his father lay a hand on Gert. Now or ever. He’ll fucking die first.

It’s not until they’re back in the relative safety of the Hostel after Old Lace provided a massive distraction allowing them to get the fuck out that anyone realizes Gert has injured her hand. Old Lace keeps shuffling around her, making a noise that is both oddly distressed for a dinosaur as well as unnerving coming from one, which is when Chase pays attention to the fact that Gert is keeping her hand in the pocket of her jeans jacket, out of view, but with her elbow held strangely stiff. When she finally relents and lets them see it, the swelling is obvious as well as the beginnings of bruises. If it’s not completely broken, it’s at least fractured or badly sprained. 

Chase is ready to cry as he holds it, as gingerly as he possibly can, in order to examine it because, surprise, he’s the one in the group who has the most experience dealing with injuries. Not just because of lacrosse, either, but he doesn’t offer any word of explanation to the others and he lets them assume whatever they want to. That’s not important right now. Gert, for all that he’s sure that she’s hurting, looks only mildly annoyed, which is, considering Gert, the same as every other day of the week. She’s fucking amazing, and he loves her, but he can’t help but feel that this is his fault. If he hadn’t told her about his dad, she wouldn’t have swung, her hand in his wouldn’t be swollen and bruised, he could hold it as tightly as he wanted to instead of gaping at it like it’s the end of the world.

“Look, it’s nothing,” she says, flat, toneless, but he can see the way the muscle in her jaw tightens ever so slightly when she speaks, which means that, no, it’s not nothing, but trust Gert to say exactly that.

“Chase,” Molly’s voice has a high, tight cord to it that threatens panic. He should know because he feels it, too.

Gert, however, just reaches out with her uninjured hand to catch at Molly’s wrist, pull her closer, comfort her. “Molls, look it’s fine.” 

There’s a moment when Chase thinks she’s going to attempt to move her fingers where they are tender and fragile in his own hand so he rubs a thumb across the inside of her wrist. “Don’t. Move.” It’s as authoritative as any of them have ever heard him, flush with something that sticks in his throat and threatens to make other words come tumbling out, words that it is too soon to utter, especially to Gert who can be skittish around emotions.

It’s only been a week since they kissed in the middle of the night while everyone slept, and they haven’t spoken about it in all those days. Not about the way Chase sang, poorly, bad enough that he would have been laughed off the stage at any of those music competitions that he used to watch with his mother when he was little because it was bright and happy most of the time when so many other things were not. (If he sometimes thought Gert should be on those shows, he never said anything about it, barely even admitted it to himself.) Not about how Gert watched him, rapt, at attention, as though he were something glorious and special instead of just Chase the failure, forever scampering away from everything that’s hard, always running back to easy, where he can just drift along. They haven’t talked about it not because Chase hasn’t wanted to, but because he finds that he cannot make his lips form any words about it at all. Hell, he’s not sure his mind knows the words to say, though it seems like his heart, beating at a million miles an hour, threatening to explode, has already gotten there, is overcome with everything it feels. But it’s hard to trust his heart sometimes. It still loves his father, after all. Even with everything he’s done over the years. It still wants to win his pride, his affection. 

Chase isn’t so sure that his heart is worth much. Doesn’t think it would be something Gert would want so why offer it? It was late, and she was sad. The world around them is crashing. So she had kissed him back in the moment, and her eyes had been soft, but he didn’t dare think it actually meant anything because, well, Athena. So he didn’t say anything, and she didn’t say anything. And he thought it would just go away, leave him, trickle out in fits and starts until it wasn’t there anymore.

But then she punched his father in the face right in front of him without a moment’s hesitation, without a word, without even much provocation. Just punched him. And Chase’s heart swelled and the dam burst, and now his insides are flooded with how much he loves her, which is problematic because it keeps wanting to rush out of his mouth like white water.

“Chase, you’re being dramatic. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.” Gert makes to pull away from him, to take her poor hand back and do God knows what with it to potentially hurt it even more.

He can’t allow that. This is already his fault. His fault because his father is his own problem, but he didn’t take care of him. There was a moment. There was a long drawn out moment where he could have just blasted him with the Fistigons, let it be over with, for good, but he couldn’t do it because of his stupid, trembling heart and all its emotions. So he froze. Like he has frozen beneath his father’s gaze too many times before, but Gert didn’t freeze. She also didn’t send Old Lace after him, which would have been the best move. No, Gert did it herself because she has the strongest character of any person he has ever known and, of course, she wouldn’t stand there and look at Victor Stein, knowing what he has done, and let it go. Of course, she would take up that fight, especially when Chase himself couldn’t.

Because she’s the best fucking person in the whole goddamn world, and he loves her even though he will never, ever deserve her.

That doesn’t mean he’s going to let her hurt herself further, though. “It’s not. Gert. It’s not.”

Her attention keeps wavering, distracted, split between him, Old Lace who keeps pacing and making that strange sad cat mewling noise, and Molly with her wide eyes and quivering lip, who is younger than the rest of them, who Gert has been steadily trying to protect as long as possible while educating her in all the ways the world is a nightmare. Then there are the others, Alex, Nico, and Karolina clustered around them, quiet, but still a palpable presence, adding to the confusion. If she shifts wrong, Gert could do serious harm to her hand. Chase knows. Chase knows all about injuries, and he’d tell her. If she’d listen. But she won’t listen because there are fifteen things happening, and her attention is like a pinball machine when the extra balls are set loose, flappers and lights everywhere, too much to take in so you just play through as hard and as fast as you can.

She’ll hurt herself. Worse than she is now. And it will be his fault.

“Chase, no, I’m telling you. It feels fine.” Gert is not even looking at him now, but she is making a move to go, probably to comfort Molly, to show her that the fingers will still bend and the wrist will still turn.

“Gert, please, just stop talking and listen to me, baby. For once in your life, please. For once in all of our lives, I actually know what I’m talking about.” Chase doesn’t yell. He learned a long time ago in ways he doesn’t like to think about that he doesn’t enjoy yelling. But his voice pitches up in that moment, high and louder than he wants it to be and desperate. He doesn’t even catch what he called her until it’s out of his mouth, and the ramifications of it are plastered across the faces of everyone there. 

Gert’s jaw is clenched tight, and he’s positive that she is going to rail at him about it, about calling her baby in front of everyone they know, for telling her to be quiet, so he just looks at her, and she stops. Her face goes as understanding, as soft and concerned as it was a week ago when he told her about his father, when he sang to her, when he kissed her. Her face goes soft and agreeable, and he is stunned by how beautiful she is all the time, and how the levels of it change based on her mood. He is shocked to his toes by how much he wants to kiss her and bury his face in her hair and thank her for making that move when he was too much of a coward and a failure to do so.

Instead, he looks back at her hand, still cradled between his own like it is thin, thin glass that will shatter if he breathes on it too hard, and he says, without looking at them because he can’t right now, “It’s not nothing. Do you know how many bones are in your hand? Do you know how fragile they are? You don’t know how to properly land a punch.” He cuts himself off before he can follow that with you don’t know how to take one because it’s not relevant here, and it will give him away to her even more than he has already given himself away. Signed, sealed, delivered. He is hers now. It should be more terrifying than it is, but Chase has seen how gentle Gert can be with the people who matter to her. She will not break him into dust on the ground under her heel. Even though she could. Easily.

“Maybe it doesn’t hurt yet, but that’s only because you can’t feel it. There’s too much adrenaline in your system, and it hasn’t caught up with you yet.” But it will. It will, and he doesn’t want her to feel that. “You need to stay seated, and this needs to be taken care of.”

The most surprising thing of all is how Gert immediately stops moving and listens for once, the way she turns her entire body toward him, as though he is the only person in the world, cuts off the rest of them. “Okay, Chase. Okay. So now what?” 

Shit. He didn’t think this through. He can’t fix it. This is beyond his capacity to heal or hide or set. If it was a broken toe, it would be easy. Not much you can do for that except bind it to the other toes, reduce the swelling, wait it out. He knows what to apply heat to or cold, how to bandage, how to apply the right amount of concealer in order to make a fading bruise just look like a shadow, but he’s never had to fix a broken hand by himself. “Nico, can you? The staff? Can you magic it?” If she can’t, they will need to find a doctor or a hospital. One where they won’t be recognized. One where there won’t be questions. Chase doesn’t want to do that because a hospital fitting those criteria will likely be in the sort of neighborhood that they’re not safe being in. Not just because of threats on the streets but because Karo’s weird cult church people might be prowling, looking for kids to disappear.

He glances over his shoulder at Nico who looks five shades amused and two confused and one that is maybe, just a little bit, knowing. Well. He can ask her about that later when Gert’s hand isn’t potentially shattered because she threw an impressive but completely untrained punch at his dad’s stupid face. 

“Oh,” Nico starts when she finally realizes that he has been talking to her, and Chase can’t tell if it’s a blush or just her makeup making her cheekbones red. “I think so. I’m not positive. I’ll try. Of course, I’ll try. Just stabilize it, I guess.”

She doesn’t need to tell him that. Chase isn’t going to let go of Gert’s hand until she’s better. Maybe not even after that. If he had his way, he thinks he’d cling to her forever, trace each line across her palm until he has memorized them all, until he can delude himself into thinking that the way they intersect on her skin spells out his name, some kind of strange prophecy. For now, though, he focuses and does what she asks to the best of his ability, which is not that great considering because while he might have the most experience with injuries that doesn’t mean he’s completely sure about what he’s doing here. This is not medicine. He’s not a doctor or a nurse or anything. He’s only ever been a kid with too many injuries with sports to use as an excuse and the express command to not tell anyone. Now he’s told someone. He’s told Gert, and she’s hurt because of it. He really wishes he’d never opened his stupid mouth in the first place. 

So he keeps Gert’s hand in his, uses the tips of his fingers to gently separate the digits, not focusing on how puffy the skin looks or the way the color is darkening, especially around the joint in her thumb that marks how she closed the rest of her hand around it. That’s not how you throw a punch, baby, he wants to tell her. Now that he’s uttered the word, he’s worried it’s the only thing he’s going to be able to call her, wonders if she’ll break her hand on his face when he says it next. Doesn’t matter. He’s going to train her to punch correctly, how to place her fingers, where to hit, how to land so that this doesn’t happen again. He’ll teach all of them everything he knows about self-defense. Hell, he should have already done it, and that’s on him. He’s the oldest. He’s supposed to be responsible, an example. All he feels like is an after-school special about what not to do.

“Ready?” Nico sounds nervous, keyed up and completely unsure of whether she can manage what’s needed.

Gert still hasn’t said anything at all, and Chase has been careful not to look at her because he doesn’t know if he can keep his face in check anymore. When he tries for one slight, subtle glance, what he sees is that Gert’s other hand remains around Molly’s wrist, that her lips are moving slightly, murmuring too low for him to hear even though he is right next to her, and that she is speaking to Molly who is nodding, head down, cheeks wet, terrified. He concentrates, and he can hear her. “It’s alright, Molls. It’s fine. Nico and Chase will make sure everything is fine. Nothing’s broken. It’s okay.”

“Let me hit things next time,” Molly manages between her sniffles, and Chase’s heart aches anew. That’s not Molly’s burden to take on, and he hates it even if he understands where she’s coming from. 

“You can’t hit everything.”

“Yes, I can, and I would obviously do a better job than you.” Molly’s voice is young and petulant and hurt. 

He didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and he wonders whether the guilt will gnaw a hole right through him. 

“Chase?” Nico’s voice wavers. “Chase, ready?”

Nodding, he looks back at her and doesn’t move. “Let’s see what your magic wand can do.” Because he’s supposed to be flip, he’s supposed to make jokes, he’s always supposed to be talking. He’s not supposed to want to settle his head on Gert’s lap and beg her forgiveness. There are certainly not supposed to be hot tears pricking at the corners of his eyes that he simply cannot seem to will away. Failures cry. Failures moan about their lot in life. Winners do something. Heh, he thinks, as he watches the staff crackle with energy, winners can suck it. 

“It’s not a wand,” Nico bites back because she is also nervous, and it’s easier to fall into their pattern of everyone bickering. 

Though it doesn’t work as well when Gert’s not part of it. Gert brings the most life to the game of launching one-liners back and forth, but she’s still utterly focused on trying to calm down Molly. Not even worried about her own hand. Right now she is a sister above all else, and he sees. He sees where her world lies, and it makes her even more beautiful. 

“Sorry, Hermione, can we just move this along?” Once Gert is okay he can escape into the Hostel, find the smallest, most out of the way thing to curl up under and just hide for a while until his heart calms down and his mind stops freaking out, until he stops worrying so much that she will hate him. Until he stops hating himself for letting her get hurt. So probably never. But he’ll push past it because they need him. Maybe. Kinda. He likes to fool himself into thinking they do, but they probably don’t. Molly is stronger. They’re all smarter, more capable. Nico is a magic girl from some goth anime. Karo is an actual star fallen from the sky. Alex acts like he’s learned his leadership abilities from Captain America himself. 

And Gert is Gert. She needs nothing. She has always been out of his league. Mythic.

You kissed me because you were sad, he thinks as Nico says something that gets lost in the crackle of energy that surrounds their hands, Gert’s tucked into his palms. You kissed me in a strange moment out of time, and I’d like to get back there. You punched my dad in his goddamn face when I couldn’t even move. His insides feel like all those love ballads on the singing shows, and he hates it and adores it at the same time, wishes it would never stop.

The energy around their hands finally fades, accompanied by Nico’s voice. “Ta-da! I think. I guess. Maybe. Move your fingers?”

Everyone looks at him, and he shakes his head. “Don’t move yet,” he says and then fixates on her hand again. It looks better, it looks normal, but he doesn’t let that tell the whole story, instead checks each finger, applying slight pressure, twisting, everything he can think of, listening for gasps of pain or anything abnormal at all. He has never held Gert’s hand this long before. He has never held anyone’s hand as long as he has been cradling hers today. If life was fair, it would be under different circumstances. Of course, if life was fair none of this would be happening to any of them at all. 

“I think,” he raises her hand and tests the wrist by bending her hand down and then back up. This is the least resistance he has ever gotten from Gert on anything. When he looks over at her, she is watching him, eyes still soft, expression gentle, though he doesn’t know if it is for him or just to help ease Molly who has stopped crying but her eyes are still puffy. The girl looks exhausted; they all do. Battle fatigue, he thinks. They need to sleep and eat and make sure to drink plenty of water. A fight can take a lot out of you. He should know. It feels like his entire existence has been a battleground. “I think you’re good. You did it, Nico.”

He doesn’t want to let go; he does, though, slowly, gingerly, folds his hands in his own lap. They feel suddenly empty and cold.

Nico’s shoulders hunch forward as she expels a long breath and then looks from Alex to Karo and back to Alex, grinning tiredly. “I am so glad that worked. Gert, I am so glad that worked.”

Gert has extended the healed hand to Molly who is checking it obsessively, the girl’s hands shaking a little themselves. “Thanks, Nico,” Gert says, truthful, sincere, honest.

Chase sits on the floor, and leans back against the wall and just watches them. As they mill around Gert’s hand in turns before starting to scatter. Old Lace, now that the drama is over, curls up close enough to him that he could brush his hand over her if he just reached out, though he doesn’t because he doesn’t know if he’s allowed. His entire body feels very heavy.

Finally, it is just him, Gert, and Molly in the room, though Molly is obviously dead on her feet, swaying a little, muttering about how she’s fine. “You have to sleep. You used a bunch of energy. Go. Sleep,” Gert is pestering her.

“I’m fine. Don’t tell me what to do.” Gert doesn’t even bat an eye at her, and the next moment Molly’s voice has slid into something scared and childlike. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t punch things again. I won’t let you. Let me punch all the things.”

Chase doesn’t mean to interrupt them or make them think that he’s eavesdropping, which is not what this is so much as he just can’t not hear them when they’re right there and pretty loud, but Molly’s comment makes him laugh. “Molly, I’ll teach her how to land a punch so she doesn’t hurt herself.”

Silence while Molly stares at him, eyes narrowed as though trying to figure something out, as though trying to discern whether he’s telling the truth or not. “Promise?” There’s a threat there.

“Promise.”

“She’ll be safe? With you?”

Chase blinks because this conversation seems to have taken a strange turn. Or is he just taking it the wrong way, making it seem like what he wants it to be instead of what is it? “Of course, Molly. As safe as possible. That’s all I can do.” Which is not utterly safe. Which is not completely safe. This is Gert they’re talking about who puts herself in harm’s way when she feels like someone has been threatened, and oh man he has no idea how to counter that, isn’t even sure it’s worth it to try if he still wants to be standing afterward. “I won’t hurt her.” He has never been as sincere about anything as he is in that moment.

Molly nods like she understands before fixating back on Gert, leaning heavily against her side in the sort of gesture of affection that it seems like only she is allowed, before sighing. “I’m so tired.”

“Go sleep.”

“But,” Molly starts, and Gert shrugs her off and pushes her gently towards the hall. 

“I’m fine.” There’s Gert’s voice that will not tolerate any argument. He knows it well; it’s often been directed at him over the years. “Go sleep.”

He tries not to show any sign of amusement as Molly lets out a long huff of air before turning away from the main room to trudge down the hall, weaving a little as she goes. It’s not until she disappears from view that he worries about the fact that now it’s just Gert and him in the room, alone save for the sleeping dinosaur who he is sure will not have his side in anything even if she has curled up near him like a fond cat. He is alone with Gertrude Yorkes who injured her hand socking his father in the face, who he called baby in the same breath where he told her to be quiet, who makes everything inside of his body melt and spark. He wants to touch her. He wants to hold her. He wants to kiss her, but he’s just Chase Stein. The least likely human being on the planet to be able to climb Mount Olympus. 

“Hey,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to say, and Gert has just been standing there, arms crossed over her chest, looking at him.

“Hey yourself.” She settles down on the floor next to him, side by side, their arms and legs touching.

Every beat of his heart seems to alternate between yelling, “This is enough!” and “This is not enough!” It’s not like him to be quiet or shy or hesitant about anything. He is normally the one kicking the door down and asking where the party is, but that is all a facade. If he tried to bring that out, Gert would tear it down with one blink of her dark eyes behind her glasses. 

“How many bones are in the human hand?”

“Twenty-seven.” He doesn’t even pause to think about the answer, and he knows it’s damning.

“How easy are they to break?”

Chase shifts where he sits, uncomfortable with the line of questioning, with Gert and her seemingly unrelenting quest for the truth. It reminds him of that TV show he found on Netflix with the FBI agents, the one he watched a little bit of when he pulled a muscle in practice (trying to twist away from his father’s blows) and their hunt for the truth. Above all else. Even each other. “Do you want to believe, Gert?” he asks because it’s easier.

When she rolls her eyes at him and sighs, he panics because he thinks that’s she’s going to leave, and he doesn’t want to be without her yet. That part will come soon enough. For now, he’d like to keep her just there, side by side, warm against him, where he can pretend that this is something else for a moment. “Too easy,” he says, blurts, hates himself for uttering, but hey it’s out there now. “It’s too easy to break them. Especially if you don’t know what you’re doing when you throw a punch. Especially if you tuck your thumb inside. Especially if you hit something as hard as a jaw.” Especially if you’re young and emotional and trying to figure out how to defend yourself because you’re just so tired of it. But he doesn’t add that last part. Something in Gert’s eyes makes him think she’s already figured it out. She’s too smart for him, always a hundred steps ahead. It won’t matter what mechanical wonder he makes, he’ll never catch up to her.

“He broke your hand.” It’s flint and stone and steel. 

Chase has heard Gert rage, he has heard her fury, but this is something new, and it worries him. “No, he didn’t. I.” He swallows before he tries the words out again. “I broke my hand. On him. Because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Her jaw looks so tight he’s worried that all of her teeth will snap and fall out of her head. “Next time I’ll punch him harder.” She makes it sound like nothing else in the world matters.

“There won’t be a next time.” 

“You said you’d teach me how to hit. You don’t get to take that back now.”

“Gert,” he sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He is tired. He doesn’t know how she isn’t tired but maybe it’s the rage, the injustice of it all. Maybe it’s just the fact that Gert is the best person on the face of the earth, and they don’t deserve her. Maybe she’s just very good at fooling all of them. “He’s my dad. It’s my battle. And I.” Say it. “I couldn’t live with it if he hurt you.”

“But it’s okay if he hurts you?” 

Chase doesn’t know what the right answer is. That has always been his problem, especially on tests. Life is a test. He never knows the right answer. What he says, though, is, “No, but it’s better than if he hurts you. You’re special.” He wants to add “to me” to the end of it and doesn’t, half afraid that if he were to vocalize it, the knowledge would fly from his mouth to his father’s ear and then Victor would have a new target, a new way to torment. It’s not until this moment that he worries if he’s already given himself away, if he did it the instant he slid between Gert and his father during the confrontation, Fistigons on, eyes wide and sparking. Chase wonders if his father has ever taken the time to get to know him well enough to have read him in that moment and immediately hopes the answer is no.

He starts a little when Gert’s hand reaches over to cover his, fingers insistently threading through his own until she’s holding onto him tight. “Be careful,” he chides, stupidly, and it is likely futile because Gert always does exactly what she wants. “We just got that fixed.”

“You’re special, Chase.”

He laughs, but it’s sharp and with no mirth. “Sure. You’re special, I’m special, we’re all special. The world is a special place. That sounds hollow coming from you, Gert. Leave the eternal optimism to Karo. You can tell me the truth. I can take it.” He has been taking it for years. It is internalized now. The fact that he is a failure.

Gert kisses him, and he melts into it, the hand not wrapped in her fingers threading into her hair because he’s wanted to do this again for seven days and now it’s happening. It runs through his mind briefly that he must be dreaming or concussed. Maybe he fell and hit his head. Maybe when he put himself between his father and Gert, his father knocked him out and all of this has been some delusion. He’s okay with that. He’d stay here forever because Gert is kissing him, and her free hand is clenched tight in his shirt like she never wants to let him go, like she is fiercely trying to get something across to him, something that he is too dense to pick up on.

When she finally pulls away, gasping, her eyes are soft behind the thick frames of her glasses. “I meant, Stein, that you’re special. To me.”

It ricochets through his head and breaks everything in its path. It makes his heart burn like a coal inside his chest, and he can’t stop himself from pressing their conjoined hands over it to try and calm it down. “I didn’t think you wanted to kiss me again. You didn’t say anything.”

“Neither did you.” Gert’s eyes narrow to almost fearful slits, and he doesn’t understand.

“It’s not in your nature to hide.” The fact that it is in his goes unsaid, left by the wayside, an undercurrent to those words. He has been hiding as long as he has been alive in one way or another. Sometimes because it was necessary and other times because he doesn’t really know anything else.

Gert has always been the one in the light.

Only now she looks uncertain. Now she looks terrified and unsure and young. “I thought. I thought maybe you realized you made a mistake, and you didn’t want to kiss me again.”

“I only want to kiss you.” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it because when the brakes on his mind go out, they do so in spectacular fashion. “Maybe forever.”

“That’s illogical,” Gert says automatically, instantly, pushing her glasses up her nose, but her cheeks and her neck are bright red.

“That’s me.” She does not deny it; they both know it’s because she can’t. Chase, when he’s not hiding, has always followed his heart over his brain. It’s probably not a sound course of action, but it is what it is. It is who he is when he is the most himself. “I thought,” he reaches out to do something he has wanted to do many times since they ran away and tucks a strand of purple hair behind her ear, “you realized you could do better.”

“What do you mean?” She sounds genuinely confused, and he hates the idea that he has to explain it to her. 

Chase sighs and closes his eyes for a moment in an attempt to gather the courage to let the words out instead of just swallowing them and kissing her again. He can’t stand the idea of not warning her, though, not giving her the chance to run now while the door is open. It’ll be easier if it ends before it really begins. For her. Maybe not for him. He’s already in love. He’s already lost. But that’s fine. He’d rather protect her any day. “I’m a failure and a coward and a liar. You always did the hard thing, and I just stopped. I went for the easy thing because I didn’t want to keep falling down. I didn’t want to be alone. But I left you alone. I was a bad friend. I’m a bad friend. You don’t want me, Gert. I’m just a pretty disappointment.”

When he opens his eyes, she is looking at him with her head tilted slightly, and her eyes are sad again, the sort of sad that he’d love to be able to reach out and wipe away because there is nothing better than when Gert smiles, nothing ever glows as bright as that. He wants to ask her if she remembers when he used to call her Athena. He wants to ask her if it’s okay to do it again, wants to explain how he never meant anything bad by it. He just didn’t have enough words to describe how bright and protective and wonderful she was. It was just easier to say Athena than never stop talking.

“Hey,” he touches her face with his free hand, remembering again that the other is twisted up in hers and she has made no move to let go. He can live with that. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re not dumb, Chase, but sometimes you’re a moron.” 

“Yeah?” 

Gert is smiling. Gert is smiling at him. And it’s not her tongue in cheek smile. Or the smile she gives Molly with its fondness. It’s not the tired smile she plasters on at school when she’s trying to get people to listen to her. It’s not the gentle smile she has started to give Old Lace when the dinosaur bumps against her arm like a cat. No, this is a new smile on the face of Gert Yorkes. It is a little cheeky and a little teasing and a lot hot. And he touches the corner of her lips with a finger before he even thinks about it. 

“I don’t think you’re any of those things.” The smile grows a little, and his heart thumps so hard in his chest that it hurts. “I wish you wouldn’t think you were any of those things, either, but I know that doesn’t just go away.” 

No, he thinks, it doesn’t just go away, but if Gert keeps looking at him like that he might just forget to linger on it. 

“But I’m okay with listening to you if you want to talk about it. Or just telling you other things.”

“Like what?” He runs a thumb over the back of her hand, liking the way that her eyes dart and the flush spreads over her cheeks. Gert who can stand up in front of a room full of people, with only a little shake now after conquering her anxiety, and ask people to sign up for her club cannot look him in the eye right now while saying sweet things. He loves it.

“Like you are special. And I like you. And I like kissing you.” She shoves her glasses up her nose with more force than is probably necessary, and Chase remembers that she can have trouble putting words to emotions sometimes. 

“Aww, baby. That’s sweet.”

The scowl on her face holds no hint of actual irritation. “Chase.” The way she says his name is not a warning.

“What?” he smiles because she is there, she is right there, close enough to touch, warm against him, grinning at him, telling him that she likes him. Chase smiles because this feels like something he is not supposed to have, something he should give back before he breaks it, but he’s greedy. He’s greedy, and he loves her, and he wants it. So he cups it close in his hands, against his chest, and promises himself that he will be careful with it. 

Gert is looking at him all bright eyes, but her lips are quirked a little, playful. “Don’t call me baby.”

“Awww, honey, why?”

When she scoffs and waves a finger in his face as an admonishment, he catches it and then tugs her closer into another kiss. He could kiss her forever. No matter what she says about it being illogical. Nothing Chase has ever known in the world makes him feel as light as being with Gert does. Nothing makes him feel so safe.

“You hit my dad in the fucking face for me,” he murmurs when they break apart but are still so close together that his lips brush over hers when he speaks, send sparks down his spine.

“Your dad’s an asshat.”

“If I didn’t know how heteronormative it was, I’d ask if we were dating.”

“Maybe just this once it isn’t.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Why not? Honey.” 

She sighs into his mouth when he kisses her again, and makes a noise that he doesn’t completely understand except that it is something he would like to hear again and again and again. Forever. If he can.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on my [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/sarkastically) which is a mishmash of so many fandoms it's probably confusing.


End file.
